Two Steps Forward ... Pause

Happy Earth Day!  I want you all to know that this year, for the first time, I really did turn off the lights.  I cheated, though.  I had the TV on because stumbling around here in the dark by myself was creepy.  I thought I could take a nap and miss it all, but no luck.  I sat around trying to knit by TV and candle light.  No luck.

I hear the cat creeping around here, but I don't know exactly where she is.  Here's the thing, I take a step, she takes a step, I take another step and I hear her jump down from somewhere.  Creepy!  When I turned on the lights I expected to see my ball of yarn wrapped around the dining room table.  Mercifully, that was not the case.

I've been working on the Spring Trellis shawl and besides the fact that there are hundreds of stitches from the start to the end of the row, the yarn is as thin as my eyelashes and it's more hairy than Big Foot's butt. 

Now usually I don't mind mountains of yarn for a project, and normally hairy yarns don't scare me, BUT with this shawl I've hit the trifecta: big, hairy and it has nupps.  Oy!   A little red scarf with a hairy hat would have been easier.  Still I plod on.  Chart 3, row 8 of 17 is where I am now, and after chart 4 (20 rows), I'm done.  Who knew it would take this long?

To take my mind off my misery, I decided to take a little spin break and loaded up the Lendrum this morning with a BFL batt from Copper Moose:

It's pretty nice, but kind of boring, so I decided perk it up with some merino/tussah silk that I bought at Rhinebeck last year:

Both of the yarns are gray, but the BFL is gray/green and the mystery merino is gray/blue.  I'm having second thoughts, so I'll probably ply a little, see how it looks and if it's bad, I'll have two new skeins of navajo plied yarn.  It's a win/win.

So now, I can continue to knit, go downstairs and spin, or I can warp up the loom and weave during my knit breaks.  Or I could do laundry and dishes and maybe mop a floor around here.  Either way, knitting will happen.

Oh, and I tried to describe my Prelude to one of the ladies at knitting circle on Thursday, but a picture is better, I think.  Here's what it looks like:

Well, back to the knitting needles.